How to avoid buying a ruined domain

Keeping the integrity of your automotive SEO strategy in tact.

Looking to buy a new domain for your automotive website or any website in general? Check the SEO value of that domain first. It’s slim, but there is a chance that the domain you want to purchase has been removed from Google’s search index due to previous spam and abuse. For the integrity of your automotive SEO value, it might be a good idea to do a few quick searches.

Head of Google’s spam team Matt Cutts suggest that you first do a site: domain Google search first to see if you get any search index back. If you don’t….that is a BAD sign. This means that Google has possibly blacklisted this sites URL.

Next, just try doing a straight up search for the domain to see if there is any history at all you can piece together to view the reputation of this site. Still nothing?

Try going to www.archive.org and view any old pages of the site to see if it had any possible spam going on. Bad content, spammy SEO content, ect.

Overall, if you aren’t getting anything back on this domain quest…..that is not a good sign for your automotive SEO campaign you are trying to put together.